The Cultural Politics of the New Cross Massacre

In the first of our winter series Dr Aaron Andrews talks about the New Cross Fire in south-east London in 1981. In the early morning on Sunday 18 January 1981, thirteen young black men, women and children were killed in a house fire on New Cross Road in the London Borough of Lewisham. Two-and-a-half years later, a fourteenth name was added to the list of victims. Forty years on, the true cause of the fire remains a source of contention, and the response of the state and media to the disaster-at times veering between indifference and hostility-has become emblematic of the structural racism of British society.
This paper examines the cultural political movement, led by a network of prominent black British activists in towns and cities across England, which was established in the aftermath of the fire to raise funds for the injured and bereaved, defend the victims’ reputations from press attacks, and campaign for the ‘true’ cause of the fire to be established.
Through the New Cross Massacre Action Committee’s campaign, it argues that the long history of racism experienced by black urban communities eroded trust in state institutions. Following the fire, members of these communities memorialised the victims in poetry and music, by marching through the streets of London, and later by erecting physical memorials across Lewisham. They also contested the official narrative, as established in the police investigation and a coroner’s inquest, by deploying alternative forms of expertise, holding their own Fact-Finding Commission, and creating an archive of the campaign. Through this decades-long cultural and political activism, the story of the New Cross massacre, and the fourteen people who lost their lives, has not been forgotten.
Read the accompanying Urban History article and other videos in the series at:
www.cambridge.org/urbanhistoryseminars
This seminar series is jointly organised by Urban History and the Urban History Group.